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openstenoproject / plover

Open source stenotype engine
http://opensteno.org/plover
GNU General Public License v2.0
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Non-printing strokes can't be used in Add Translation dialog #853

Open arxanas opened 6 years ago

arxanas commented 6 years ago

Summary

When opening the add-translation dialog, one writes out strokes on their machine and they're entered into the strokes text box here:

screen shot 2017-11-21 at 9 39 31 am

However, you can't write strokes that don't produce output here. Try installing the emoji dictionary and write MOEJ in the text box. No output is produced:

screen shot 2017-11-21 at 9 40 36 am

Plover Version

Running Plover from source at 773ba28.

System

ProductName: Mac OS X ProductVersion: 10.12.6 BuildVersion: 16G29

morinted commented 6 years ago

This is sort of by design, the Add Translation dialog ignores anything that is a keyboard shortcut (the {#} syntax) so that you can use Plover to {#Tab}, {#Return}, and {#Escape} throughout the window. Wouldn't it be weird if you suddenly couldn't copy-paste inside the window?

A better solution to this particular problem might be finding translation meta that doesn't do anything.

arxanas commented 6 years ago

Why is MOEJ mapped to {#}? It doesn't seem like it adds any value over just not mapping that stroke at all.

morinted commented 6 years ago

It is a translation that does literally nothing, meaning that if you accidentally write MOEJ you don't lose capitalization, glue/attach state, or add anything to your asterisk buffer. Contrast with {} which would cause you to lose your attach state and capitalization. Empty string is ignored by Plover and is just treated as unmapped.

Ah, and it doesn't show the untranslate when you are writing emoji, which would be unsightly when captioning.

If you don't care about the untranslate showing, it could be removed for the sake of making definitions easier. If I want to use it in the add-translation dialog, I usually add a letter, like "PHOEPBLGS" and {#BackSpace} the extra -S.

morinted commented 6 years ago

Maybe there could be an option to capture all steno input including keyboard shortcuts, for when you want to edit that kind of stuff? Just a checkbox on the dialog?